Hobart R. Gay

Hobart Raymond Gay (16 May 1894-19 August 1983) was a Lieutenant-General of the US Army during World War II and the Korean War.

Biography
Hobart Raymond Gay was born on 16 May 1894 in Rockport, Illinois, and he was commissioned into the US Army as a Lieutenant upon graduating from Knox College in 1917. In 1940, he was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel and then to Colonel on 24 December 1941, and he took part in the Operation Torch landings in North Africa in November 1942 during World War II. He served as chief of staff of the US I Armored Corps under George S. Patton, and he was promoted to Brigadier-General on 24 June 1943 before the invasion of Sicily. He served as Patton's chief-of-staff from the Sicily campaign to the end of the war, and he survived the car crash that killed Patton after the war's end in December 1945.

Postwar career
In 1946, he commanded the US 1st Armored Division in Germany, and he returend to America in 1947. In September 1949, he took command of the US 1st Cavalry Division in Osaka, Japan, and he led the division during the Korean War. His men committed atrocities, killing hundreds of refugees as they tried to flee across the Naktong River; he claimed that many were North Korean communist infiltrators. In 1951, he was relieved of his command when the People's Liberation Army of China drove the United Nations forces out of North Korea, and he retired in 1955. He died in 1983 at the age of 89.